Excel Is Still the Most Used MES in the World
Half of manufacturers plan production in spreadsheets or on paper, and the traveler is still king. What that costs, and the way out that isn't a two-year ERP project.
Roughly 50% of manufacturers still run production planning on Excel or paper, 62% of small shops track maintenance in spreadsheets or group chats, and paper travelers go dark the moment they print. The realistic fix is replacing one spreadsheet at a time with flat-priced tools, not a full ERP project.
There's a line practitioners repeat because it keeps being true: Excel is still the most used MES in the world. Roughly half of manufacturers run planning on spreadsheets or paper. In shops under 50 people, 62% manage maintenance through spreadsheets, paper logs, or group chats. And the paper traveler, the classic, is still the norm: once it prints, the job is a black box until the paper comes back.
What the spreadsheet floor actually costs
Poor production planning is estimated to cost shops 5 to 10% of annual revenue. Preventable downtime runs $12,000 to $45,000 a year at small firms, and preventive maintenance programs save 12 to 18% against running reactive. None of that shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it persists. A spreadsheet never sends an invoice for what it missed.
Why shops stay on Excel anyway
Because the alternative on offer is wrong-sized. Full ERP costs a 20-person shop $50,000 to $75,000 all-in over five years, more than 70% of ERP projects miss their goals, and per-seat pricing punishes exactly the shops that want everyone on the system. Against that, Excel is free, familiar, and already installed. Staying is rational. The mistake is treating "Excel or ERP" as the only two options.
One spreadsheet at a time
The honest way off the spreadsheet floor is workflow by workflow: replace the scheduling board first, or the maintenance log, or the quote sheet, with a tool that does one job, prices flat per shop, and is live the same week. That's how CitrusWeb builds for manufacturers: Works takes the planning board and the traveler (it's an MES in plain terms), and the same approach fits fabrication shops and injection molders where the pain shows up first. Keep Excel for what it's good at. Stop asking it to run the floor.